Dreyer's consolidates production in Bakersfield plant.

Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream has announced that with the completion in 2005 of a $100 million expansion of its Bakersfield, CA, ice cream manufacturing facility, it will close its City of Commerce, CA, manufacturing plant at the end of April, 2006, and shift production to Bakersfield. The Commerce closure will impact 99 employees, but Dreyer's hopes to offer alternative positions or work locations, including jobs in Bakersfield, to most of those employees.

Dreyer's Commerce plant currently produces ice cream in family-size cartons for home sale as well as three-gallon-size containers for restaurants and parlors. Production has been transitioning to Bakersfield over the last year.

With the recent expansion in Bakersfield, Dreyer's has hired 381 new employees there in 2005, bringing its Bakersfield employee total to nearly 800. Dreyer's has more than 6,900 employees across the country with more than 2,600 in California.

Dreyer's currently has two plants--one in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and another plant under expansion in Laurel, Maryland--that handle East Coast production. The Laurel plant, when completed in 2006, will be one of the largest ice cream plants in the world, rivaling the recently expanded Bakersfield plant.

In addition to the Commerce and Bakersfield facilities in California, Dreyer's currently has three other ice cream manufacturing plants in the West--in Tulare, CA; Houston, TX; and Salt Lake City, UT--for a total of seven ice cream plants across the country. The Salt Lake City Tribune reported in early January that Dreyer's had been considering closing the Salt Lake City plant, which has 125 workers, but opted instead to close the Commerce plant. The Tribune indicated that the decision was based in part on the Commerce plant being older than the Salt Lake site.